Widespread Celebrations But No Pardon For Turing.
from /www.turing.org.uk
This is Alan Turing Year – the year we are to celebrate the accomplishments and life of this remarkable man. As a computer scientist, he is one of the icons of our discipline.
This month the House of Lords declined to grant a posthumous pardon for the crime of gross indecency for which he was convicted in 1952. Many people are upset about this decision. I think it was a good and appropriate decision. Read the explanation carefully, as I think they’ve summed it up well.
“A posthumous pardon was not considered appropriate as Alan Turing was properly convicted of what at the time was a criminal offence. He would have known that his offence was against the law and that he would be prosecuted.
It is tragic that Alan Turing was convicted of an offence which now seems both cruel and absurd-particularly poignant given his outstanding contribution to the war effort. However, the law at the time required a prosecution and, as such, long-standing policy has been to accept that such convictions took place and, rather than trying to alter the historical context and to put right what cannot be put right, ensure instead that we never again return to those times”.
A pardon is effectively the same as saying that the conviction was a mistake. It wasn’t. Not for that time. Of course it would be wrong to convict him had he done the same thing in the present day. But he was convicted of an act he committed knowing it was a crime (at that time). He did not deserve what he got, but the legal system has never really been about justice. Nor is it about right and wrong. Mostly, the legal system is about vengeance.
What happened to him was tragic, and I share the sentiments of many who sincerely wish we had been more enlightened at the time so we could have given him the recognition he so richly deserved. But we weren’t – we were just coming out of a terrible war where much of Europe had personally come face to face with just how monstrous humans can be. We were also just starting to emerge from our Victorian sensibilities and coming to realize that people – ALL people – might just deserve to be treated with the same respect and dignity – regardless of colour, religion, sexual orientation, or financial standing. We’re not there yet.
Alan Turing took his own life in 1954, probably in large part because of the conviction. That can NEVER be put right. What we can and should do is to make sure we learn from our mistakes so that ultimately we learn never to do this to anyone else again.
Erasing our mistakes, as pardons do, does NOT make anything better. In fact it makes things worse – they give us permission to sweep our past atrocities under the carpet and pretend they never happened. Thus insulated from our mistakes, it becomes much more likely that it will be only a matter of time before we do it again.
